Lewis Hamilton out-qualified Mercedes teammate George Russell for just the second time this season at the Spanish Grand Prix. The gap between the two drivers at the end of Q3 was vanishingly small.
Hamilton crossed the line with a 1:11.701, with Russell just two-thousandths of a second adrift. The fine margins went against the latter this time after his remarkable pole in Canada.
Russell set an identical lap to Max Verstappen in Montreal, but he took top spot because he’d posted it earlier. Mercedes threatened to challenge once again around the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya but ultimately finished three tenths adrift of Lando Norris’ benchmark.
Hamilton’s one and only Saturday ‘victory’ over Russell this year had come at the Japanese Grand Prix in April, six races ago. He also beat him in Sprint qualifying in China, but this doesn’t count towards his overall record.
The 26-year-old’s dominance in the intra-team battle has been heavily publicised. Hamilton said in Monaco last month that he didn’t expect to outpace Russell again this year.
The Ferrari-bound driver told Mercedes to investigate a potential issue with the tyre blankets after qualifying a disappointing P7 in Montreal. It’s unclear whether this has led to an improvement.
George Russell livid with Lewis Hamilton prep lap at Spanish Grand Prix
Communicating with his Mercedes team on the radio during Q3, Russell issued a furious rebuke of Hamilton. As is customary, the Silver Arrows had released their cars in tandem for the first runs.
But the former Williams driver was unhappy with Hamilton’s approach to the preparation lap. Both of them would have been looking to get their tyres up to temperature before the stopwatch started.
Clearly, Russell felt that he had been compromised by the sister car. His engineer Marcus Dudley urged him to be calm and assured him that he could raise the matter in the post-qualifying debrief.
“What the **** was Lewis doing, prepping that lap?” Russell said.
Dudley then replied: “He just… It’s fine. We’ll talk about it afterwards. Head in the game.”
James Allison says Russell has done something he ‘wouldn’t have predicted’
Coming into qualifying in Barcelona, only two drivers boasted better head-to-head records against their teammates than Russell. Those were Red Bull’s Verstappen and Williams’ Alex Albon, who had whitewashed Sergio Perez and Logan Sargeant respectively.
Mercedes technical director James Allison admits he ‘wouldn’t have predicted’ the 8-1 margin. He acknowledged that Hamilton was ‘struggling’ to extract the ‘fine margins’ when it mattered.
It remains to be seen whether F1’s most successful driver can now reassert himself. The Spanish GP kickstarts the first triple-header of the season, so now is the ideal time to find form.
Much as he has been impressive in 2024, Damon Hill feels that Russell remains overly ‘desperate’ behind the wheel. He spurned an opportunity to win in Canada with some decisive mistakes.
Late in the race, he attempted a move on Oscar Piastri into the final chicane that Toto Wolff said was ‘never on’. This saw him fall behind Hamilton before he made a brave move at the very same corner to score Mercedes’ first podium of the year.
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